HIE VOLCANIC CARIBBEES 331 



tion. The mountains of St. Kit ts are broken into wild 

 ridges and ravines for several thousand feet, meeting the 



sky with an edge like a knife-blade, and culminating in a 

 pyramid of black lava known as .M<>imt Misery, 4.'!.'!') feel 

 high. Since emancipation it lias borne the name of .Mount 

 Liberty. In its summit is a crater aboul one thousand feel 

 deep, which has been long quiescent, and is now trans- 

 formed into a lake fringed with trees. A sister summit, 

 Monkey Hill, is nearly as high. One of the parasitic cones, 

 known as Brimstone Hill, seven hundred and eighty feet 

 high, is crowned by a citadel formerly called the Gibraltar 

 of the West Indies, hut now abandoned. 



The principal town, Basse-Terre, is situated on a beau- 

 tiful curving inlet of the shore. The town from the sea 

 presents a charming glimpse of red and white roofs nestled 

 among tall trees, while gradual slopes covered with sugar- 

 plantations and dotted with tall chimneys or groups of 

 whitestone buildings appear behind the town. There are 

 palms everywhere, cocoa-, fan-, and cabbage-palms; many 

 breadfruit trees, tamarinds, bananas, Indian fig-trees, 

 mangos, and unfamiliar things the negroes call by incom- 

 prehensible names " -ap-saps" and " dhool-dhool>." 



Like all the English colonies, St. Kitts has excellent 

 roads. There are several small villages throughout the 

 island. The people, who call themselves Kittefonians, have 

 many tidy, well-lmilt wooden houses, arranged in neat 

 streets, or surrounding a handsome square containing a 

 wonderful banian-tree and many other beautiful plant-. 

 The population of about 31,900 is nearly all black or col- 

 ored. 'Idle distinct ion between these classes is very marked 



and always insisted upon. Colored people may associate 



with whites upon terms of equality, bu1 the negro is always 

 reckoned as belonging to a servile race, and must keep an 

 appropriate station. 



Sugar is practically the only export, and this industry 

 is almosl dead, the condition being very similar to that in 

 Antigua. Reduction of labor and want of employment 



